They just don't get it

A few new examples that some people just don’t understand the meaning of “pro-life”:

Yesterday, my State Representative refused to introduce me on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives because I was an “instrumental” “idealogue” for giving presentations about her support of a clone-and-kill bill for her opponent during the primary campaign. Then she talked to the Austin American Statesman reporter to tell him why, and he called me. I did get to explain that in politics, we always have to choose between the candidates and that “I’m all for stem cell research, I just wouldn’t kill anyone for it.” We were a blog item.

Then today I got a comment on a post from April 14th about the Texas Cord Blood Bank. The comment reminds me that I shouldn’t “close the possibility” of using embryonic stem cells. As I pointed out in that post (and this one), we can’t consider the creation and destruction of embryonic humans for the purpose of research or for therapy of another human. We can’t “kill anyone for it.”

Each and everyone of us was an embryo at one time. If we had been killed or harvested at that time, we wouldn’t be, now.

That’s the point that Michael Gazzaniga doesn’t seem to get, any more than he did in the past. He spoke to York (Pennsylvania) College students earlier this month, saying,

During his talk, he presented different arguments people have used to debate the issue, one being that doing the research endangers a potential life.

“Everybody in this room values human life,” Gazzaniga told the students. “Look around you. Look at your loved ones. Do you see a hunk of cells or do you see something else?”

A group of cells in a petri dish have no brain, no memories, he said. But some people against the research believe the cells are equal to an adult because they have the potential to turn into a life, given the right circumstances, such as being placed in a woman.

Gazzaniga used an analogy.

Think of The Home Depot, Gazzaniga said. Perhaps, in one Home Depot there are enough tools and people to build 30 houses. If Home Depot burns down, the news headline would read “Home Depot burns,” not “30 homes lost.”

No, my friend who is sitting next to me is not a blob of cells. But then, he’s wasn’t a blob of cells with the potential to become a human being, even when he was an embryo. He was an organized organism. That organism has continued to this day, without the purposeful action of another, intentional in the case of the destruction necessary to embryonic stem cell research.

As others have pointed out, it’s natural for us to feel more emotional attachment to the people that we know and love and who are easily identifiable as “persons.” But, just because I don’t recognize a given human being as a “person” does not make him any less a human being or any less human-enough to deserve protection from intentional acts to kill him. After all, as a woman (and a talkative physician), I wouldn’t be considered a “person” in much of the world.